in a Pay & Display parking space for which she’d neither paid nor displayed—Sophie was keeping an eye out for the parking warden—she continued to monitor the entrance to the parking building on Hobson Street.
Leo was on top of the Polly situation. The moment “Polly” went online he would be onto it, tracing the location. Paige had borrowed her mother’s cat carrier and was dealing with the return of Mr Minx to Mary Burmeister. Despite everything that had happened, at least Mary would be happy and they could close the case and mark it as a success. In the meantime, Sophie had started work on their new case—following Mr Dixon to get evidence of his cheating.
Carolyn had given Paige Tyrone’s car make and model, the name of the company he worked for—Global Solutions—and his work and mobile numbers. According to the schedule he’d provided to Carolyn, he was playing squash this morning, busy with meetings all day, and “probably working late tonight”. It sounded as if his extra-marital activities would take place after work, but you never knew. Carolyn was paying them for their full-time services, and that is what she’d get. Sophie had followed Tyrone Dixon to this parking building from the squash club so now, in order to go anywhere for an illicit rendezvous, he would have to drive past her.
Sophie sat with one eye on the parking entrance and kept refreshing Polly’s Facebook page. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Leo, they just didn’t know him very well. For all they knew he hadn’t set up an alert and was snoozing away in bed right now, happy to be off the hook for the petnappings and oblivious to anything Polly might be doing. Sophie didn’t think so, but two pairs of eyes were better than one.
Polly’s page had remained dormant overnight but Sophie still held out hope that Talia’s request would get another response from the fake Polly who was trying to make it look as if everything was okay.
Sophie gulped, a wave of nausea rolling through her. She sometimes forgot they were talking about a real girl who might be being held against her will somewhere. She hoped Polly was just off somewhere being rebellious and independent. Any other alternative was horrible to think about.
Sophie was startled by the passenger door opening suddenly.
“Hey, any news?” Paige said, hopping inside the car.
Sophie was thrilled to see Paige had brought two large coffees with her. “You legend,” she said, taking one, “but no, nothing yet. Though, something did occur to me. We don’t know whether he’s still in his office.”
Paige eyed Sophie. “You mean because he might have left on foot?”
“Yeah. With all the hotels in the area, he could just walk down to City Life or somewhere for his rendezvous.”
“Or maybe his sidepiece lives downtown.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve got an idea.” Paige pulled out her phone. “What’s his work number?” Sophie recited it to Paige, who asked the switchboard to put her through to Tyrone Dixon. “So he doesn’t see my number,” she explained to Sophie. A second later she hung up. “He’s there.”
“That’s a relief.” Sophie took another sip of coffee. “So, how’d it go with Mrs Burmeister? Was she thrilled?”
“So thrilled, it nearly brought a tear to my eye,” Paige said. “Poor thing, she truly, truly loves that cat.”
“He’s probably her best friend.” Sophie nodded.
“You know what though? She wasn’t thrilled enough to give me the five grand she was going to give Leo.”
“Paige!”
“What? She could have. She doesn’t need it. She’s loaded.”
“Are you still going to try and get the $500 from the RLBC?”
“Damn right I am. Why shouldn’t we?”
Sophie grinned. “Hey, can you reach back and get my bag? I’m going to switch to my laptop, it’s easier.”
“Sure. What are you doing?”
“We should go over what we know about Polly, see if we can follow up some leads.”
Sophie and Paige had agreed that just because they were hired to nab Tyrone cheating didn’t mean they couldn’t still work on finding Polly.
“Work the clues,” Paige said.
“Huh?”
“It’s something Dad used to say,” she added, sadness creeping into her voice. “I thought it was from a movie, until I realised he’d made it up. It was part of his character. When we played Gumshoe Detective, he was Inspector Garnet: kind underneath his surly exterior, tough but fair, you know the type… and I’d be Jonesy, his junior assistant, inexperienced but plucky and a natural at crime fighting. When we were solving a case he’d growl to me—in character—that we needed to work the clues.”
“Work the clues,” Sophie repeated. “I like it,” she added, with a smile for her friend.
“I get the feeling you already have a thread you want to follow,” Paige said as Sophie turned on her laptop.
“There’s one thing we haven’t really delved into much and it’s kind of important.”
“Which is?”
Sophie looked at Paige, her eyes wide and serious. “Where did she go? That night, after dinner? Where did Polly Dixon go the night she disappeared?”
“She doesn’t have a job, right?”
Sophie shook her head.
“So, she was off doing something related to uni, something social, or something related to her environmentalism,” Paige said.
“Yeah. I already asked Talia and she doesn’t know where she was. Neither do their friends—Talia already checked—and neither does Facebook.” Sophie was scrolling through posts as she spoke.
“So, the obvious person to ask next is…”
“Dominic. But he wouldn’t tell me what he was doing that night. He said he couldn’t remember, but he was openly hostile by then. He didn’t even try.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty suss. To not even try to help find someone he used to date?”
“Do you think he’s hiding something?”
“I’m not sure what, but yeah. I’m going to check online, see if there’s anything from that night, but Paige?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You keep an eye on the parking entrance, okay?”
“Definitely,” Paige said.
No one needed to mention the sleeping-while-on-stakeout incident.
Half an hour later Sophie cried out. “Look! An Instagram photo taken at The Place.”
“What place?”
“No, it’s the name of restaurant where he works. The photo is from that Wednesday night. It’s some sort of fundraising gig and look… in the background.” Sophie’s pulse was racing. “It’s Polly! And she’s sitting at a table with someone. You can see an elbow.”
Paige peered at the grainy photo. Polly was visible in the corner, completely unaware that Dominic had taken a selfie of the room.
“She looks tense,” Paige said.
Sophie was already shutting her laptop and grabbing her bag.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Dominic again. You stay here, I’ll get a taxi.”
“Are you sure—”
“He saw Polly that night. She was there. He might know who she was with.”